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infinite_array wrote:Backers also get access to the Mechwarrior RPG beta! I'm looking forward to seeing their streamlined RPG rules.

Well, I hope they really ARE streamlined. Just got the Shadowrun 6th World book from the same company and with the same claims... And well, it didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Not only the rules seem to be an unholy mess, maybe even messier than 5th, all the while claiming it did get a streamline... It also followed tradition, with 10 whole pages of day one errata, with anything from typos to full blown missing tables (yes, multiple).

...I do. It can be summed up as such: "not even with a 10-foot pole". Shadowrun: Anarchy, a game for which they used the very same system, is a dumpster fire.

One for which, years after the fact, they have not even fixed the pregenerated characters, of which there are like 30 of them, and not many even work as designed.

Yeah, nope.

I can confirm that Shadowrun Anarchy is a mess. Problems/typos/errors were brought up before release and not ever to my knowledge corrected. I tried getting into it long after the (gencon?) preview/beta/whatever release and the same issues people complained about months earlier in various reviews and forum threads persisted a year later. Shadowrun 5e was similarly put together and never fixed given that they're releasing the follow up 6e now. I wouldn't consider Catalyst to be a reliable company with regards to correcting any problems after they're released given my experiences with them for multiple editions of Shadowrun though I can't comment on Battletech specifically.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/08/10 22:46:33

...I do. It can be summed up as such: "not even with a 10-foot pole". Shadowrun: Anarchy, a game for which they used the very same system, is a dumpster fire.

One for which, years after the fact, they have not even fixed the pregenerated characters, of which there are like 30 of them, and not many even work as designed.

Yeah, nope.

I can confirm that Shadowrun Anarchy is a mess. Problems/typos/errors were brought up before release and not ever to my knowledge corrected. I tried getting into it long after the (gencon?) preview/beta/whatever release and the same issues people complained about months earlier in various reviews and forum threads persisted a year later. Shadowrun 5e was similarly put together and never fixed given that they're releasing the follow up 6e now. I wouldn't consider Catalyst to be a reliable company with regards to correcting any problems after they're released given my experiences with them for multiple editions of Shadowrun though I can't comment on Battletech specifically.

they're a bit better with battletech but battletech has a stable ruleset thats like 30 years old and the folks running CGL are, bluntly, more battletech guys so likely pay closer attention

Ultimately the power of an Inquisitor extends as far as he can make it extend

About 2"/50mm in diameter, heavy. They're given out as tokens, originally in the military, for perfoming some action or belonging to a unit. The US President gives them out to military types who he meets. They're not always military in origin, some professional orgs give them out too.

Since the nice ones are relatively expensive to produce I suspect the BT ones will be a lot smaller and thinner, more like pins. Might look nice as a display though.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2019/08/11 04:00:16

within the battletech universe they're used among clanners to detirmine the venue of a blood named trial. each contestant has a challange coin, with the clan symbol on one side, and their name on the other. the coins re then placed in one of those spiral gravity well wishing well things, I forget the exact order, but depending on whose coin reaches the bottem first one of the contenders gets to choose the weapons, and the other gets to choose the venue.

So if I won I could declare "we'll fight augmented" (IE mechs, battle armor whatever your specialty is) and my opponent would get to choose where we fight.

useally the augmented or not bit can give a huuuge advantage (m,echs have a advantage augmented vs an elemental, but an elemental would flatten a mechwarrior unaugmented)

Ultimately the power of an Inquisitor extends as far as he can make it extend

H.B.M.C. wrote:"How will you fight?"
"We will fight unaugmented!"
"Very well. And you, where will this fight take place?"
"Underwater!"
"Wait... what?"

actually thats not too far off something that actually happened. During his Bloodname trial Phelan Kell had to fight an elemental unaugmented. he choose to fight on a ship in the cargo bay of a ship in space so as to engage the element in a zero gravity enviroment. the choice of location won him the match

Ultimately the power of an Inquisitor extends as far as he can make it extend

It seems apropos, considering how much the Clans obsess with the number 5, that with five days left to go, we unveil the 2m Stretch Goal!

While the Pledge Level graphics have been updated on the site, due to how long it has all gotten with so many great graphics--pledge levels, stretch goals, and so on--I thought I'd make it easy and simply post it here as well.

$2,000,000 –NO GUTS, NO GALAXY! BattleTech is filled with endless stories and tabletop fun. This campaign has unlocked a huge swath of such action, and we’ve got even more to enhance your enjoyment of this game we all love:

· Magazine. A new, digital-only magazine envisioned as a blend of MechForce Quarterly-meets-BattleTechnology. New fiction, scenarios, and more, and all officially in canon! This community will specifically be asked for content submissions. We will commit to four issues, with timing of release to be determined. WARRIOR and above will receive the first issue for free, while STAR COLONEL and above will receive the first two issues for free.

· Reinforcements! While all players will have access to the free PDF of the record sheets for the miniatures from this campaign, all STAR COMMANDER and above will receive physical record sheets for free. Additionally, we’ll create a Reinforcements package that will include a cardboard standee for each design—exactly along the lines of those found in theBattleTech Beginner Boxand A Game of Armored Combat—corresponding to those record sheets. STAR COLONEL and above will receive this package for free.

· Camospecs: A Unit Art Manual PDF. The BattleTech community is fantastic, filled with great energy and passion that can lead to fantastic projects. One of those is the Unit Art Compendium, created by the community for MechWarrior Online. Our Camospecs: A Unit Art Manual PDF will be patterned after that amazing project. It will include a variety of paint schemes for various combat commands from the various factions, appropriate to each design, along with text discussing those details. This PDF will dove-tail into the Camospecs: A Guide to Faction Paint Schemes from the $1,750,000 Stretch Goal; each time a new How To Paint guideline is added to that PDF, it will correspond directly to a camo schemes from this Camospecs: A Unit Art Manual. WARRIOR and above will receive all PDF updates for free.

But that's not all! Oh no, the best part is the last part:

All Hail The UrbanMech!

First, the UrbanMech as its own box! All backers will be given one free UrbanMech. Additionally, this ’Mech will be provided as an add-on for any players who wish to purchase additional copies.

Second, we will commission a plushy UrbanMech! All backers will be given first access to purchase this plushy.

UrbanMechs! Plushy UrbanMechs!!!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/12 14:54:45

I keep meaning to ask but what’s with the urbie love?
I mean I have read the memes and there is some funny fan fiction but where did it start?

Your last point is especially laughable and comical, because not only the 7th ed Valkyrie shown dumber things (like being able to throw the troopers without parachutes out of its hatches, no harm done) - Irbis

Urbanmech is famously ugly, the MWO one actually looks pretty cool but the original looked downright awful, the "trash can with legs" joke was well deserved. It's REDICULOUSLY slow for such a light mech, but it has 3 things going for it: it packs a heck of a wallop for it's size with the AC10, it's really cheap to produce/buy, and background-wise they made bajillions of em.

it's been one of those underdog designs that you grew to love despite it being kinda awful, because they usually die horribly but once in a while can punch WAY above it's weight class, and the design and the name naturally suit it to a lot of jokes

Late 90's, early 2000's. We're experimenting with cable internet at college (so we have the fastest internet in the country basically). I'm playing whatever the current Mechwarrior game is, and I'm playing online, a new experience.

I find a lobby which is interested in lopsided and weird games, so we select the City map...night time....no radars...and then we choose Assaults vs. Light mechs. I think we had 20 people in the room, and 5-6 went Assaults and everyone else went light mechs. Now it's early internet days, we don't have voice chat, etc., so it's all text.

We're zipping around in the city at night, trying to locate the Assault mechs. I stop in a street and look down the way to an intersection. I see a Locust (or similar tiny mech) running full speed from right to left. If we'd had voice chat I think it would have been screaming "oh gak, oh gak, oh gak!" A split second after he zips across the intersection a wall of laser fire and missiles follows it. I assume he died an instant later, but it was just one of those brilliant Mechwarrior moments that stuck out to me and I still remember it vividly to this day.

Being an old school game, it made it even more sinister without radar because draw-distance was only maybe 500 meters? So you'd be stomping down a street and suddenly see the shape of a huge assault mech. You'd pop off a shot or two and zip into a side street. One of the best Mechwarrior/Battletech experiences I've had. Great fun.

SeanDrake wrote:I keep meaning to ask but what’s with the urbie love?
I mean I have read the memes and there is some funny fan fiction but where did it start?

For a confluence of a few reasons:

1) It was a meme before the Internet as the largely acknowledged worst designed (and looking) mech of the entire 3025 lineup. It was a recon class mech that could do none of the things that recon class mechs do

2) It was a kind of poster child for min-maxing. There was a rash of 2/3 movement assault mechs slathered with every gun known to man amongst small play groups since the orignal rules favored armor over speed. The urbanmech would inevitably show up in light-mech only matches in the hope that the massive (for the weight class) autocannon would deliver some kind of hail mary shot.

3) There is no greater underdog. Even the Chameleon and Charger have roles they can fufill, but the urbanmech is a turret with aspirations. (not even a good one, since it lacked true 360 degree swiveling)

4) it was a very distinctive silhouette in the 3025 era lineup. Most mechs were based of other IPs and could be confused for their respective derivative properties, but no one else was really attaching a giant cannon to R2D2 and asking to be taken successfully.

5) Even parody products of the series included the Urbanmech. Up to an including the infamous BattleCows game.

Bender wrote:* Realise that despite the way people talk, this is not a professional sport played by demi gods, but rather a game of toy soldiers played by tired, inebriated human beings.

SeanDrake wrote:I keep meaning to ask but what’s with the urbie love?
I mean I have read the memes and there is some funny fan fiction but where did it start?

It's a jumping turret, and for what it's supposed to be doing it actually works pretty well, as it's relatively cheap and the jumping makes it surprisingly mobile inside their preferred terrain. The AC/10 gives it a mean punch with decent range, and it's very well armored for its weight.

It's also fun to try and make it work for anything else, as it's kind of famously bad at anything but defending built up terrain ^^.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:What changed to make speed valuable? Or at least more valuable than armour and weapons?

The clans. A slow mech against the clans doesn't usually fare too well (particularly if the rest of the lance is also made up of slow mechs), because the amount of dakka they put out was about twice what you could reliably expect from any mech of any size, while being able to stay out of range of most of their weapons.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/08/12 19:27:23

SeanDrake wrote:I keep meaning to ask but what’s with the urbie love?
I mean I have read the memes and there is some funny fan fiction but where did it start?

It's a jumping turret, and for what it's supposed to be doing it actually works pretty well, as it's relatively cheap and the jumping makes it surprisingly mobile inside their preferred terrain. The AC/10 gives it a mean punch with decent range, and it's very well armored for its weight.

It's also fun to try and make it work for anything else, as it's kind of famously bad at anything but defending built up terrain ^^.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:What changed to make speed valuable? Or at least more valuable than armour and weapons?

The clans. A slow mech against the clans doesn't usually fare too well (particularly if the rest of the lance is also made up of slow mechs), because the amount of dakka they put out was about twice what you could reliably expect from any mech of any size, while being able to stay out of range of most of their weapons.

no the clans have changed. they're talking the pre-clan days. the clans also are about when the game introduced XL engines, Endosteel internals etc that made faster mechs a little more viable. prior to those various weight saving techs getting a fast mech was pretty hard. 6/9/6 (the speed of a Phawk) was aboiut the normal speed of a light mech and a few notable mediums. most mediums moved at 5/8 or 4/6.
by 3050 you had a number of mediums maintaining the same armor and weapons levels, and boosting their speed. the centrion went from 4/6 to 6/9. and you even had a 55 ton mech capable of moving an insane 7/11/7 in the form of the wraith

Ultimately the power of an Inquisitor extends as far as he can make it extend

I love the Wraith. It's my favorite mech from TRO 3055. Takes some skill to use it but it's a beast.

About the Urbie, my first encounter with one was in the old game the Crescent Hawks revenge where you got to use 2 in a city defense scenario. It was quite a shock to see how much of a punch it packed compared to other lights even if it was ugly as a sin.

M.

Jenkins: You don't have jurisdiction here!
Smith Jamison: We aren't here, which means when we open up on you and shred your bodies with automatic fire then this will never have happened.

Raxmei wrote:24ps is the range. 24". If that were the points cost then lasguns and plasma guns would cost the same amount and flamers would have a cost of "Souffle".